Bolivia Bound

Santa Cruz de Los Milagros!!!

February 10, 2014

Well, this week Hermana Hincapie and I had a wonderful opportunity to see miracles in the lives of our investigators. I can truly say I know that this mission really is Santa Cruz de los Milagros.

We have an investigator, Micaela, with whom we have seen lots of miracles from the first time we met her, and this week was even more incredible than normal. It all started about two months ago in Braniff when I first met her with Hermana Lopez. She told us that she lived in La Colorada, so we passed the referral to the offices to pass on to La Colorada. However, when I got to La Colorada, they had never received the referral. That was the first miracle, that if the Lord hadn’t sent me to La Colorada, no one would have known about her referral. Then, we started to teach her and she started to progress rapidly. Because she’s had to travel a lot this past month, it has been hard to teach her frequently, but every time we do, she expresses her desire to get baptized, she prays, she reads her Book of Mormon, and she’s just fantastic.

Well, last Monday we found her again for the first time in a long time since she had been traveling, and wanted to visit her, so we invited her on what we thought was just a whim to a family night that we had in a members’ house that night.  We picked her up later that night to go to the house, and when we were there, her two-year-old daughter started to throw up, several times. Micaela was really worried, especially because her daughter had diahrea for two days before that. Well, the Lord always knows what He is doing - the hermana we were visiting, Maria, was a nurse, and explained to Micaela that this situation was urgent, that she needed to buy medicine right away, and told her what medicine was necessary.

We left with Micaela to go to the pharmacy when Maria ran out of her house and gave Micaela money, saying "I just felt like I had to give you this to buy the medicine." Micaela started to cry and later told us that she had no money at all to buy the medicine, which was why she hadn’t done anything about it up till now. Then we went to the pharmacy, but the pharmacist told us she was sorry, but she couldn’t give medicine for a baby without a prescription from a doctor. We felt defeated for a moment, when another woman, Flor, who "just happened" to be in the pharmacy said, "I work with a pediatrician that lives three blocks from here. She’ll help you now for free if you say you’re a friend of Flor." So Flor took us to see the doctor, who attended us even though it was late at night, and the pharmacist agreed to stay open and wait for Micaela to come back.

We were amazed to see so many miracles in one night - that the Lord guided us to plan a family night in the home of a nurse, then invite Micaela to this home, then that He guided the nurse to give Micaela money, then that Flor was in the pharmacy at that exact moment, the pediatrician lived three blocks away, AND that the pharmacist agreed to stay open. Thanks to this incredible series of miracles, the Lord saved the life of Micaela’s baby. (And we were able to contact Flor to teach her!) We went home that night incredibly grateful for the chance to see the hand of the Lord so clearly in Micaela’s life.

But that still wasn’t the end! Micaela has been looking for work for a long time, and she was excited about a job she found in Hipermaxi, the supermarket of Santa Cruz. But the problem was that she would have to work Sundays.  We went to talk to her about Dia de Reposo (Sabbath Day) on Friday, and she has a lot of faith - she said if she had to work Sundays, she would reject the job offer because she knows that the Lord will bless her for her obedience. Well, we started to pray that Micaela would be able to find work. The next day, we went to make copies and the women attending there told us that she was a member of another ward, that she was looking for someone in this area that wants to work in her Internet - and since she’s a member, they wouldn’t have to work Sundays! We were thrilled, told her about Micaela, and passed the information on to her. We’ll see what ended up happening with that, I’m not sure, but what I do know is that the Lord definitely loves Micaela.

All in all, I am so grateful to see how the Lord truly does work alongside us, like the scripture in Jacob 5:72 says. I know that the Lord is doing everything He can to help Micaela progress, just like we are. He has all the power in the end, to solve problems that seem unsolvable and to help us in every aspect of the work. But I know that this doesn’t just apply to missionary work. Heavenly Father wants to give all of us the miracles we need, big or small, to help us get through the trials in our lives.  We just need to have the faith sufficient to believe that He WILL help us, like the faith Micaela had to reject a good job offer to follow Christ. I love being a missionary!

Okay, so let me explain the pictures a little bit. We have two here.  This one is of our baptism Saturday - us with Anair, who got baptized, and her mom and her little sister. We are very excited because we have been teaching Anair for about a month now, and she’s gone to church for a good amount of time, but we’ve never been able to find and teach her parents. They are literally never home, except for ONE time late at night when we didn’t have time to teach, only to get the baptism permission slip signed. Well, we were excited when Anair told us her mom wanted to attend the baptism - it gave us the chance to contact her! We talked to her a lot, and she agreed to let us come by yesterday, Sunday. Well, yesterday we not only talked to her, but also her husband, and they were great! They both said they want to go to church this Sunday and invited us back to teach them more. Yay for the chance to teach families!!!

The second is of our house. I think I mentioned a few weeks ago that we have found all kinds of crazy animals, including ENORMOUS snails, outside in our patio. Well, we had a new crazy this week. We were studying calmly when Hermana Hincapie freaked out and pointing at our ceiling. Well... you can see what we found! An even more enormous snail, climbing up our wall! Hahaha we couldn’t even believe it. So that’s a little taste of Bolivia for ya.

Love you all! Have a wonderful, miracle-filled week!!!

Love,

Hermana Chelsie Faulk